US stem cell science survives concerns over consent

IT'S two steps forward for US stem cell science, as an expected step backwards has not materialised.

In April, the National Institutes of Health issued draft guidelines on expanding funding for projects involving human embryonic stem cells. This led to concern that some of the ESC lines currently eligible for government grants might be shut down as they would not meet the guidelines' strict rules on informed consent by couples whose embryos were used to create them.

They need not have worried. The final guidelines, issued on 6 July, give a special working group the discretion to make these older lines eligible for funding, after considering the ethics involved. "I expect that most of them will be found to have been ethically derived," says Sean Morrison of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist